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Join us for a reception and lecture featuring investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell, sponsored by John and Francie Pepper and The John A. Scroth Charitable Trust, PNC Bank Trustee.

Jerry Mitchell is an investigative reporter and co-founder and director of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting who helped put four Klansmen behind bars: Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers; Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers, for ordering the fatal firebombing of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer in 1966; Bobby Cherry, for the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church that killed four girls; and Edgar Ray Killen, for helping organize the 1964 killings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner (popularized by the fictional movie about that case, Mississippi Burning). His work also led to a trial of serial killer Felix Vail, believed to have killed at least three women. In 2016, a Louisiana jury convicted Vail of murdering his first wife 54 years earlier — the oldest conviction in a serial killer case and perhaps the oldest solved cold case in U.S. history.

A winner of a $500,000 MacArthur “genius” grant and more than 30 other national awards, including being named a Pulitzer Prize finalist, his memoir about his pursuit of civil rights cold cases, Race Against Time, for Simon & Schuster, is expected to be released in 2020.

This lecture is a continuation of the Freedom 55 Programming Series that includes screenings, book signings, lectures and musical performances throughout 2019 commemorating the 55th anniversary of Freedom Summer.